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099: Ron Sledge gives some insight on how King Engine Bearings operates in the US. Apr 10, 2017

Show notes

Ron Sledge has spent his life excited about cars and knew from an early age that he wanted to work on them as a career. He started his career in the aftermarket in the early 70's at Michigan Engine Bearings as an industrial engineer. He got them involved in NASCAR in the early 80's and traveled all over the country going to the races. In 2010, Ron starter working at King Engine Bearings. Ron has worked to double the sales since he started and solidified King Engine Bearings as a premier motorsports-grade bearing.

He has stayed in Kentucky, and now gets to work from home. King Engine Bearings employs several people scattered all over the country to maintain operations in North America. King Engine Bearings is actually headquartered in Israel, so it is paramount to have good communication among all employees. In total, King has about 250 employees with manufacturing and sales worldwide.

King focuses on OE replacement bearings, high performance upgraded bearings, and even aviation bearings. They work closely with customers to determine which platforms to develop new products for. They will be releasing a new coating this year which they released at PRI 2016 to address some of these customer concerns.

098: Kenny Tran of Jotech Motorsports says passion and focus are the keys to success Apr 03, 2017

Show notes

Kenny immigrated to the US from Vietnam and acquired his love of cars through his cousin who subscribed to every car magazine imaginable. They would pour over pictures and specs and dreamed of owning one of these sports cars. His passion for cars continued to grow and in 1995, he started to work at Jo-Tech which was started by his brother-in-law. Kenny was going to college for business administration but decided to purchase Jo-Tech instead of finishing his degree. The opportunity was too good to pass up, so he took the plunge and bought the business.

Kenny quickly grew the business and began sponsoring a drag racer to get his name out there. They were doing good and going faster and faster each time they went out. Sadly, while his team was repairing the car on the side of the road one night, they were hit by a drunk driver and totaled the car and severely injured several people. Kenny tried to bounce back by building his own car, but that was also hit by somebody and totaled. Not one to quit, Kenny went and purchased a Civic with lofty goals of making it run 11's in the quarter mile. They were successful in their first night with the car and then quickly got down into the 10's.

Coming from this success, Kenny decided to take the car to California to compete with the big guys. They were able to set the world record for a Honda Civic and solidify their name as a very fast performance shop. While going to many races each year, Kenny happened to meet a marketing director at Scion and they wanted to partner up on a drag car. He capitalized on this new relationship and then leveraged that to work with other companies to join as partners with the racing program. Kenny has taken this success and built up quite the reputation as an elite GTR builder but he also works on many other platforms to meet the needs of his customers.

097: Sam Barros of Nostrum Energy saw a need for aftermarket direct injection injectors and is meeting the demand. Mar 27, 2017

Show notes

Sam Barros came to the US to pursue a mechanical engineering degree at Michigan Tech University. During college, Sam interned at a nuclear power plant as a system engineer and loved the idea of working at a large engineering firm. But, when Sam graduate, he went a completely different direction. He moved to California and worked as a special effects engineer doing high-voltage special effects.

One day, Sam got a random phone call from a very prominent businessman, Nermal Mouliea, who proposed that Sam come work for him on a new fuel efficiency project. Sam did a little research to find out if this was the real deal, and it turned out to be true. So Sam packed up his stuff and headed to New Jersey to head the project. The idea was to spray water directly into the combustion chamber to reduce heat losses within the engine. While the idea is similar to water/methanol injection of many forced induction applications, this idea took it to the next level and very accurately injected fine water particles into the cylinder. They were able to achieve 25% increase in fuel efficiency with this system. While this was an excellent result, the problem was implementation. It is very difficult to modify an existing engine and even more difficult to get an OEM manufacturer to implement it in a new engine.

So, they took this technology and applied it to fuel injectors. While the OEM's were coming out with Direct Injection (DI) engines, the aftermarket had not been able to keep up. They now manufacture and modify injectors for many engines to supply the aftermarket customers looking for more power in their DI engines. EFI University is teaching a class on DI tuning using Nostrum Energy's Cadillac featuring their injectors. They work with companies such as Lingenfelter who provides a larger high pressure fuel pump for many applications. In addition to the DI applications, Nostrum Energy also manufactures their own Port Injection (PI) injectors. They are unique by integrating a divorced spray pattern to inject fuel directly down each port.

096: Thad Norman of Hypercar Development has lofty goals for their McLaren and wants to break a whole bunch of records Mar 06, 2017

Show notes

Thad Norman teamed up with a long-time friend, Safa Yousef, with aspirations to turn up the performance on the McLaren cars. Safa came from a racing background in both cars and motorcycles, while Thad came from an engineering and automation background. Together, they knew they could push the limits of what is capable with a factory car. They weren't shooting for straight line performance, but were more focused on all around improvements.

Thad and Safa had to seek outside funding to get the business going and had to try several different avenues before finding investors willing to put money into this sort of business. After securing funding, they purchased a 12C and began development for the next 2 years. The result was the 800hp package and cooling kit. They have since gone on to develop a 1000hp option and a 1200hp option that utilizes their globally-patented tri-boost technology. They are developing even more parts to step the power up to 1500hp.

095: Hear how Chris Rhoad started StudioRhoad.com to build beautiful websites and create engaging content for businesses Feb 27, 2017

Show notes

Chris went to college and specialized in Advertising and Design. He worked as a graphic designer at various companies over the years before ending up in Knoxville, TN. He had started StudioRhoad.com many years ago, but really took it serious a few years ago, and decided to run the business full time. He now employs 4 people and has several freelancers located around the globe.

His team specializes in creating websites geared towards the end user. This process includes a discovery phase where Studio Rhoad determines exactly who the end user is and how that user interacts with the company. They also help with social media marketing and content generation. To this day, Chris is still surprised at how many companies have not incorporated mobile-friendly website platforms even though as many as half their users are on a mobile device.

094: Jim Liaw tells us how he helped bring drifting to the US with Formula Drift Feb 20, 2017

Show notes

Jim Liaw grew up in Southern California and was immediately drawn to the street racing scene. But his passion really started when he saw an E30 BMW M3 and fell in love with the looks. During college, he reached out to any automotive related business he could think of looking for a job or internship. He landed a spot at Sport Compact Car as an intern working on finding new sponsors for the magazines. His next job was in the import drag racing with the IDRC series and sold sponsorships and booth spaces for their races. The next position was at Vision Entertainment that produced Hot Import Nights doing more sponsorship managements.

Jim then teamed up with a friend to start Slipstream Global Marketing with the goal of helping companies optimize their promotional spend at events. They landed a big client with Mazda and worked with them to increase youth awareness to the Mazda brand at motorsports events. In 2003, Jim gets word that the Japanese want to hold a drifting exhibition event in the United States. Their first event at Irwindale Speedway was a huge success! Despite this, the Japanese counterparts weren't too keen on hosting more events. So, Jim and his partner set out to create their own drifting series and called it Formula Drift.

Since then, they have been growing the series every year. They employ 6 other people and are holding 8 events in 2017. They stream all of the races for free on the internet and strive to provide the ultimate experience for the fans.

093: Dave Vasser used hard work and determination to build Nitrous Outlet into a powerhouse in the nitrous market Feb 13, 2017

Show notes

Dave Vasser grew up in Waco, TX and fell in love with street racing right away. He wasn't too interested in school and actually dropped out in 10th grade to work with his uncle at his framing company. He worked at various other businesses but always dabbled with modifying cars and making them fast. He opened his for automotive business in 2000 selling race gas and nitrous out of a trailer. The next year, he started renting a space and doing installs. The business grew rather quickly and he had to move to a larger space to accommodate the various techs and salesmen.

Throughout the growing process, Dave was always selling nitrous products manufactured by other people. He really enjoyed this side of the business and ended up turning over the install portion to one of his mechanics. This allowed Dave to focus on making products he needed that other people weren't making. In early 2004, he decided to take the leap and stop selling other people products. Now, Nitrous Outlet is the largest nitrous parts manufacturer in the world with 30 employees and 13,000 square foot building.

His new goal is to run the business better and become more efficient. He has hired a CFO to manage the finances and assembled a management team. Dave is getting back into racing after the car has been neglected for many years.

092: Ken Anderson has helped many companies grown their US presence. Hear about his latest venture with Mountune USA Feb 06, 2017

Show notes

Ken Anderson grew up in LA during the 70's and enjoyed normal kid stuff like biking and skateboarding. Ken's first car was a VW Bug and he discovered how much fun it was to customize it. In the mid-80's, he got a job at a local Honda dealership in the parts department. That dealership begin importing Mugen parts from Japan and was installing them onto cars. After a few years of working at the dealership, he wanted to get into racing and got in touch with Russ at RC Engineering. Ken started as a shop assistant and learned a lot about engine dynamics during his time there. Then, he heard about an opportunity at HKS and got a job as a sales person. He got in on the ground floor of HKS bringing their excellent build quality to the US.

After some time, he had an opportunity to team up with Rod Millen and began importing parts for the Miata when it was first brought to the US. They built some great cars and imported all sorts of parts for the Miata and other Mazda cars. Eventually, Ken saw yet another opportunity in SUV's and branched out to start a company that imported accessories for vehicles like the Land Cruisers, Montero's, and Troopers. This was the first company that Ken started on his own and he grew it to be a very large company. Then he sold his stake to a partner and exited the business.

The next venture was back into smaller sports cars. He met a man who worked at Cosworth during a car event and this meeting turned into another business opportunity. At the time, Cosworth's primary role in the US was to support the Champ Car racing series. But Cosworth wanted to manufacture and sell more parts in the US and Ken was put in charge of that task. When Ford sold off the Cosworth arm of the business, Ken helped introduce several products for different vehicle manufacturers. They got started with products like a CNC head for the Subaru STI, as well as a CNC head and cams for the Mitsubishi Evo. After building up yet another business, Ken left to go work for COBB Tuning for the next 1.5 years.

Ken then traveled to England for the Autosport Performance Trade Show and had a meeting with Mountune to sell them the Accessport. David Mountain, the founder of Mountune, was actually looking for somebody to introduce the US to their products and knew that Ken would be perfect for the job. So Ken took the offer and opened up Mountune USA by himself and proceeded to grow the company very quickly. He now employs 13 people and occupy a large building with a showroom, install area, engine dyno, and warehouse space.

091: Mike and Rossy Welch tell us how they met and built Road Race Engineering Jan 31, 2017

Show notes

Mike got his start with race cars be being a corner worker at the local track. After a near-death experience with a crashing car, Mike decided to move to tech inspection. Here, he started to offer repair services to the guys going through tech and then branched out to helping them modify the race cars. Then he dabbled in co-driving with Rod Millen and helping them build cars. Mike was then approached by a friend who wanted to open a shop so they opened Road Race in late 1993. Over the years, the business never really got a strong footing and the friend left the company. This forced Mike to reevaluate his situation and move the business to a smaller & cheaper location. This was at the same time that he started to focus on Mitsubishi's. When the Evo hit the states in 2003, the market changed pretty drastically. Road Race went from mainly selling parts online to mainly installing parts and tuning customer cars.

But during a race in Mexico, Mike met Rossy. She had grown up in drag racing and was checking out the rally racing. They hit it off and Mike proceeded to go out of his way to help Rossy's team with parts and repairs. They married 3 years later and now Rossy runs the shop. Road Race is now in a 6500-square foot building and is made up of 8 people. They specialize in Evo's but still work on a lot of DSM's and still dabble in various random vehicles.

090: Hear what it takes to start a performance shop with James Siebert of F&S Motorsports Jan 23, 2017

Show notes

James Siebert has partnered with his friend and fellow car enthusiast, Scott Frazho, to start their own brick and mortar performance shop. They have both been interested in and have owned Mitsubishi's over the years and exchanged stories at the annual Buschur Shootout. Individually, they both have been working on friend's cars in the respective garages and would purchase parts via another shop to install on customer's cars. They also would buy race cars, part them out, return them to stock, and then sell them to raise working capital.

In 2016, they decided to partner up and create F&S Motorsports. In the beginning, they just had a website that sold parts, but in November, they opened their brick and mortar location in Michigan to begin working on customer cars. Scott is about 30 minutes from the shop, but Jason commutes 1.5 hours each way to be at the shop. The hours are pretty brutal now, but he considers the initial time as an investment in the company with the intention that it will pay off in the future.

They are navigating the waters of starting a business with building up their customer base, marketing their business, and figuring out the best packages to offer their customers. We will be following up with James and F&S Motorsports in the future to see how they are progressing.

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